The Twisted Story Of The Asylum That Inspired Stranger Things: Pennhurst State School

Pennhurst State School held nearly 3,000 people in facilities designed for 500. In 1913, Pennsylvania declared disabled people "unfit for citizenship" and "a menace to the peace." They built Pennhurst to hide them. For sixty years, no camera ever got inside. Children were tied to beds. Adults lived in cribs. Residents who could speak when they arrived lost that ability after years inside. Then in 1968, a journalist named Bill Baldini walked through the gates with a film crew—and what he recorded changed American law forever.